NATO members Turkey and Greece have long been at loggerheads over overlapping claims for hydrocarbon resources.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that Turkey has resumed energy exploration work in the eastern Mediterranean, saying Greece had not kept its promises regarding such activities in the region.

NATO members Turkey and Greece have long been at loggerheads over overlapping claims for hydrocarbon resources and tensions flared up last month, prompting German Chancellor Angela Merkel to hold talks with the country's leaders to ease tensions.

"We have started drilling work again," Erdogan told reporters after participating in Friday prayers at the Hagia Sophia mosque. "We don't feel obliged to talk with those who do not have rights in maritime jurisdiction zones."

China has delivered six military drones to Serbia after the Balkan country moved to purchase them in a controversial deal a year ago which has put NATO on edge.

Though Serbia has an official policy of military neutrality vis-a-vis NATO, there's been increased cooperation over the past few years. However, both the Chinese drone acquirement and Present's Aleksandar Vucic recently signaling he'd like to acquire the S-400 anti-air defense system from Russia has caused Washington to threaten sanctions.

The US announcement of 12,000 troops leaving Germany now sees another scramble to secure US presences. Poland is reportedly keen to have a “permanent” US presence, complete with a command. They say at least 1,000 US troops will be involved.

Polish officials say the troops will be on the eastern border, and the command will manage all NATO troops on the Russian frontier. Poland has been courting a US presence for years, suggesting at times they’d joined NATO specifically for the opportunity to host US troops.

The opportunity to bring thousands of US troops back home, disappointingly, seems to have been short-lived hope. Worse still, the shaky suggestions from pullout critics that leaving Germany was a favor to Russia may well have played a role in a hasty scheme to dump some of the troops even closer to Russia, worsening the tensions in Eastern Europe.

Belgrade and Pristina have resumed dialogue in Brussels, but the recent delivery of American-made armored vehicles to Kosovo could make the talks difficult and signifies Washington is once again attempting to destabilize the Balkans. Serbia and Kosovo returned to the negotiating table on July 16 after a long hiatus; however the hopes of Josep Borrell, head of European diplomacy, to allow a constructive dialogue could now be in jeopardy. Washington’s delivery of Humvee armored vehicles to Pristina is a clear message to Belgrade that the U.S. will continue recognizing Kosovo’s independence. Washington purposefully sent the armored vehicles knowing it will create tensions in negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina.

Russia will not be on the updated list of countries the EU can open borders with, a source in the delegation of one of the EU countries in the EU Council told TASS. Brussels will make the updated "white list" public in the coming days, next time it will be revised in mid-August, the source said.

"No, Russia will not be included in this list yet. Unfortunately, statistics say that it is too early," the source said.

Via GreatGameIndia.com,

Huge foreign loans are given to sovereign nations by the World Bank, IMF and the likes. But the conditions that come attached to these loans are seldom told by governments to their citizens.

A recent case in Belarus has exposed the conditions laid by these agencies for loans being provided for COVID-19. The President of Belarus has exposed that the World Bank coronavirus aid comes with conditions for imposing extreme lockdown measures, to model their coronavirus response on that of Italy and even changes in the economic policies which he refused as being “unacceptable”.

Risking a further escalation of tensions, the United States is increasing pressure on European contractors to drop out of Nord Stream 2 - a major Russian pipeline project that would transport gas to Europe under the Baltic Sea, according to a report.

In recent days, a dozen US officials from the Department of State, the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Energy have held video conferences with European contractors to underline their concern about the energy project, the German Die Welt newspaper reported on Saturday.

The officials signaled that they want to stop the completion of the $11.7 billion project, threatening representatives of the European companies with “far-reaching consequences” if they continue cooperating with it, the paper said.

According to Norwegian Defence Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen, the US presence in the country will be made more dynamic. Instead of maintaining a force of 700 in the country, the US presence will soar during drills and diminish in peacetime.

Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway at the US Marine Corps Forces European Command has assured Norway that despite the restructuring of the US Marine Corps, which may have consequences for the allies' defensive capabilities, the US still promises to fully support Norway and meet it obligations.

“We will continue to develop our strong security cooperation with Norway,” Rankine-Galloway told the newspaper Klassekampen.

He added that American participation in Norwegian exercises will increase, while the continuous presence will be made more dynamic.

NATO Defense Ministers (Lorenzo Guerini, Pd representing Italy) gathered by videoconference on June17/18, and made a series of “decisions to strengthen the Alliance’s deterrence.” However, nobody in Italy talks about it, neither the media (including social media) nor the political world, where an absolute multipartisan silence reigns over all this. Yet these decisions, basically dictated by Washington and signed by Minister Guerini for Italy, not only trace the guidelines of our military policy, but also our foreign policy.

First of all – announces Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg – “NATO is preparing for a possible second wave of Covid-19,” against which NATO has already mobilized over half a million soldiers in Europe. Stoltenberg does not clarify how NATO can predict a possible second virus pandemic with a new lockdown.

Thousands of people gathered in Belgrade and other major cities to protest the Serbian government’s intent to reimpose coronavirus lockdowns. Stones and teargas flew as they clashed with riot police long into the night.

Police in Belgrade have reportedly dispersed the bulk of the demonstrators by midnight local time on Wednesday, after nearly five hours of standoffs and clashes with a crowd of mostly young men and women.

What started on Tuesday as a protest against the announced second round of Covid-19 lockdowns quickly turned into an attempt to storm the parliament and fights with the police.

Violent clashes that rocked Belgrade and other cities this week were “carefully prepared,” and are aimed at seizing power and igniting a civil war in Serbia, the Balkan country’s defense minister has alleged.

What started as a demonstration against the government-planned curfew over the coronavirus eventually got out of hand and snowballed into massive riots that saw mostly young people assaulting police squads in Belgrade and other major Serbian cities.

The brewing unrest is actually a coup attempt, Serbian Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin opined on Thursday while speaking on local television. The “terrible street violence” has purely political backgrounds, he argued.

A German equivalent to UK’s Financial Times and America’s Wall Street Journal is the Dusseldorf Handelsblatt or “Commerce Sheet,” which headlined on June 30th, “Former Chancellor Schröder: USA Ending Transatlantic Partnership”.

They reported:

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has condemned possible new US sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline as “deliberate termination of the transatlantic partnership.” A draft law currently under discussion in the US Congress is “a widespread, unjustified attack on the European economy and an unacceptable interference with EU sovereignty and the energy security of Western Europe,” Schröder writes in his statement for a public hearing of the Economic Committee scheduled for Wednesday in the Bundestag.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vu?i? was due to meet Kosovo leader Hashim Thaçi on Saturday at the White House. This was at the behest of US envoy for Kosovo-Serbia negotiations, Richard Grenell, after his much-publicized success in organizing the meeting. However, his success was short lived after Thaçi became indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity on June 24 by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office.

The US meeting has been put on hold until further notice, but as Vu?i? revealed, the EU will take over discussions between Belgrade and Pristina at a later date. It appears that France and Germany specifically will spearhead these meeting with the French Embassy in Kosovo saying on Thursday that “France and Germany expect Dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia to resume soon. Together with Chancellor Merkel, President Macron remains ready to host a Summit in Paris.” German Ambassador to Kosovo Christian Heldt tweeted:

With the Polish presidential election just around the corner, Andrzej Duda’s White House visit may seem nothing more than a dog-and-pony show, but there’s a lot more going on than a convenient pre-election photo op.

It would be the kiss of death for most principled politicians from Europe to jet over to Washington, abandoning the campaign trail, where they’d been slugging it out in a tightly contested election, to curry favour with Donald Trump.

But the right-wing Polish president, Andrzej Duda, who’s expressed both homophobic and Eurosceptic views, is most definitely not like most right-minded Europeans. And, even more unfortunate, he presides over a country where a meeting with the alt-right’s idol, Trump, could actually give him a considerable pre-election poll boost, according to political pundits.

Back in October, the World Trade Organizations announced that the US could legally retaliate against the EU by slapping new tariffs on some $7.5 billion in European exports as punishment for the Europeans providing illegal government subsidies to Airbus. At the time, we warned that this was like throwing gasoline on the embers of the US-EU trade spat as the Trump administration auto tariffs still loomed large over the global economic landscape.

Since then, the US has imposed some of those tariffs. Now, Robert Lighthizer has a plan for the last $3.1 billion

Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Just when you thought the leaders of NATO could not push the limits of insanity any further, something like NATO 2030 is announced.

After helping blow up the Middle East and North Africa, dividing the Balkans into zones of war and tension, turning Ukraine upside down using armadas of neo Nazis, and encircling Russia with a ballistic missile shield, the leaders of this Cold War relic have decided that the best way to deal with instability of the world is… more NATO.

Authored by Viktor Katuna via OilPrice.com,

In the first days of June 2020, the Greek industrial holding Mytilineos announced that it had concluded a long-term contract with Gazprom’s commercial arm.

The onset of continuous US LNG deliveries to Greece bears a much harsher reputational blow to Russian energy interests than Qatari or Algerian supplies.

Perhaps predictably given Erdogan's increased threats and foreign adventurism, cracks loom in the NATO alliance over Libya, leading to an official probe by Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

It started last week after France complained that Turkey is still breaking a UN arms embargo in effect on war-torn Libya. When a French frigate attempted to intercept a Turkish vessel suspected of running arms into Tripoli on June 10, it was reportedly "engaged" via radar, as if a missile strike was impending. The AP details, based on French defense sources:

According to a French defense official, the frigate Courbet was “lit up” three times by Turkish naval targeting radar when it tried to approach a Turkish civilian ship suspected of involvement in arms trafficking. The Courbet backed off after being targeted.

The French vessel was part of NATO's naval operation in the Mediterranean, Sea Guardian, at the time of the June 10 incident.

SOURCE: MOON OF ALABAMA
U.S engineered attempts to overthrow a foreign government by stirring civil arrests are usually named after a color or, at times, a flower. Thus we had an "rose revolution" in Georgia, a "green movement" in Iran and an "orange revolution" in the Ukraine.

But now the CIA and its assortment of supporting organizations seems to have run out of color choices. How else can one explain that their latest attempt in Belarus. is called a "slipper revolution".

Russian General Sergei Rudskoi has issued a formal letter to NATO on Monday criticizing them for holding a growing number of military exercises immediately along the Russian borders, and in many cases, directly aimed at Russia.

Russia and NATO tend toward having military exercises on their respective frontiers, which the other side almost always labels as provocative, even though both sides do it. There are clearly differences between defensive training and practicing aggressive operations.

In this case, NATO is preparing for the later. Rudskoi singled out a recent Barents Sea drill in which they were simulating attacks on Russian territory and the seizure of Russian ICBMs. This was the first such NATO drill since the Cold War.

US and British flags in the Barents Sea was seen as particularly jarring for Russia, but officials say they intend it to be the “new normal” With NATO interested in challenging Russia’s claims in the north, this is likely to be a growing concern.

The death of black man George Floyd at the hands of US police triggered protests in the US that quickly turned violent, involving clashes with police officers, cars set on fire, and even looting. Since then, similar demonstrations, albeit peaceful, have been held in Europe.

Around 2,000 people have gathered on the streets of Copenhagen to protest against the killing of African American George Floyd by US police.

The demonstration in Copenhagen started outside the US Embassy in Østerbro and ended at Christiansborg, the seat of the Danish parliament. The demonstrators held signs saying “Justice for George Floyd”.

The president wants a landmark event, but the German chancellor ‘cannot agree’ to travel due to ongoing pandemic.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rebuffed Donald Trump’s invitation to attend a G-7 summit, which the president is keen to portray as a symbol of a return to normality from the upheaval of the coronavirus crisis.

"The federal chancellor thanks President Trump for his invitation to the G-7 summit at the end of June in Washington. As of today, considering the overall pandemic situation, she cannot agree to her personal participation, to a journey to Washington," German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told POLITICO on Friday.

Greece on Sunday dismissed reports that Turkish soldiers had occupied a strip of Greek territory in the Evros border region, where Athens is expanding a fence to keep migrants and refugees out.

Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said allegations - picked up the the British press - that Turkish troops had occupied a patch of land that is normally submerged at this time of year on Greece's side of the border were "utterly false".

Dendias acknowledged, in an interview with Skai TV, that "a presence of Turkish forces has been observed in a strip of land where some preparatory works had been made by the Greek army" after Athens would not give Turkey the coordinates of its fence expansion in Evros in advance.

Authored by Steven Guinness,

Little has been made of Brexit since the UK ceremoniously left the EU on January 31st and entered into a transition period. Amidst the coronavirus outbreak, multiple rounds of negotiations on the future trading relationship have taken place, with round three having culminated earlier this month.

In the public eye negotiations are deadlocked. Both sides are insisting that the other must change course with just six months of the transition period remaining. As part of the withdrawal agreement, Britain has the option of requesting an extension to the transition, but must do so by the end of June. Failure to do so will mean that if a new trading relationship is not ratified by the end of the year, the UK and EU will trade on World Trade Organisation terms come the start of 2021, a consequence of which will be higher tariffs.

Via AlmasdarNews.com,

The Greek government recently accused Turkey of seizing some of its territory along its eastern border.

Turkey responded on Saturday by stating that it would not allow de facto borders after Athens complained to Ankara that Turkish forces had seized land at the course of the Evros River that separates the two countries.

A statement by the Turkish Foreign Ministry said, “Ankara informed Greece that the river course has changed significantly for natural and artificial reasons, since 1926 when the borders were established, and that the solution requires technical coordination.”

The Daily Mail described of the crisis:

Turkish troops have invaded and occupied a small patch of Greek land Greece on their contested border.

Around 35 soldiers marched on to a floodplain site on the east bank of the River Evros at Melissokomeio yesterday.